A Progressive Duck's take on Politics, Media, History, Rock and Roll and whatever else I feel like quacking about

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Circular Firing Squad

At least on the blogs. Niw it seems that TalkLeft is a bunch of traitorous assholes. Jeralyn for chrissakes. Karl Rove is laughing his fat, pasty, ass off at the mighty bloggers right now, I guarantee it.

Thank goodness the bloggers aren't running the country, it would be like having a petulent, immature, loud mouthed bully running things.

Oh, that's what we have now.

It would seem that a lot of people are forgetting themselves in their passion for their candidate. I agree that Mark Penn is questionable at best, Hillary shows regrettable judgement in letting him run her campaign, advise, I know, what with his book tour in the middle of her campaign, and someone over at Booman I think suggested that you should never have a bipartisan shop running a political campaign, I agree, which it appears Penn has.

eriposte posted on this Clinton bashing. To me, it's overzealous Obama supporters lifting out of context the whole Clinton presidency, which e encapsulates her pretty well. It's something I've written about many times. What can be said of Bill Clinton can be said about hillary as well. I highlight this graph:

What is fascinating to me is that I sometimes get arguments defending Obama along the lines of "well, he's not doing much more than what Bill Clinton did in the 1990s". Actually, what Obama is doing is strategically much worse for the progressive movement than what Bill Clinton did. Bill Clinton acted as a "triangulator" during an era of conservative dominance and when fighting Republicans (like Gingrich) were on their ascendance. After Clinton's failure to pass universal healthcare, skittish Democrats were afraid of Clinton pushing for very liberal policies and Republicans went on a full-frontal attack, that included blocking legislation (even shutting down Government - a tactic that Clinton fought them on and won) and non-stop investigations against him and Hillary Clinton. During most of that era, the media was firmly in the Republican camp and hated the Clintons and manufactured stories about them, and there was no real "fighting progressive" movement online as we have today, to support and defend progressive Democrats. It was in that era that Clinton tried to keep the Presidency in the hands of the Democratic party by appealing to Independents and Republicans - and interestingly, despite some of the bad Bills he passed, he got through numerous progressive Bills because he and Sen. Clinton knew they would not take the right's attacks and obstruction lying down.